Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates Vol 2 - The Search For Mecca

cii. XXIV.] The Shammar Invasion. I 77
numerous flourishing towns, of whicli Jilber and
Ealiaba on the Euphrates alone, had in his day a
population, besides their other inhabitants, of four
thousand Jews, while Tudmur had two thousand,
El Haddr, fifteen thousand, and Okbera on tlie
Tigris, ten thousand. Most of these cities ha^-c
now entirely disappeared. What their exact condition
may have been five centuries later we have
no record to inform us, but it seems certain that
their final overthrow dates only from the Shammar
conquest. This occurred in the middle of the 1 7th
centur}^
Almost exactly two hundred years ago, Sultan
Mahomet IV. beino^ then eno-ao-ed with the siege of
Vienna, the southern frontier of his empire was overrun
by these Bedouins, who had already marched up
from the Nejd and occupied the Hamad. They
found the frontier unguarded, took and destro3'ed the
city of Tudmur, and Ijroke up the line of its desert
communications with Bagdad and Damascus.
They
then crossed the hills, defeated the Modli, the most
warlike of the tribes of the Upper Desert, and reduced
the lesser ones to submission. The valley of
the Euphrates Avas next swept clear by them, and the
towns made tributary to themselves instead of to
the Sultan. The last vestiges of cultivation disappeared
from the right bank of the river, and
Bedouin law became supreme as far north as Bir esli
Sheykh. During tAventy years, however, so the
Arabs say, the Moali carried on the war for their